Chapter 5 - Surprise
Therehad been a silence between the two of them ever since they had leftthe canteen. Sarah not daring to ask the questions that burned onher lips and Marcus was partly reluctant to say anything in case hespoiled the rest of the surprise. He also didn’twant to let slip, to this barely known newcomer, his misgivings aboutthe current situation in case she wasn’t what she seemed. Marcus’revelation in the canteen about the end of world had produced theeffect he had hoped for and it did seem to come as almost a completesurprise to the flame haired woman. He still wished that he knew alot more about this stranger in the midst before showing hereverything as there were groups who were violently against this lastgambit of a soon to be extinct people. There had been those who haddelved far too much into what the government had been keeping backfrom the general populace, which was that only a small percentage ofthe current population would be saved.
Thiswas one of the parts of the plan that still bothered Marcus as muchas it had done when his father had told him as a young man. But,especially over the last five years, Marcus had come to realize thatit was better to expend their relatively limited resources inensuring that the species survived, than trying to save everyone. There were times that Marcus watched the ships that carry the luckysurvivors to their new homes he felt that had the same realizationthat Noah must have had thousands of years before, that sometimes youhave sacrifice the present in order to save the future. Standing onthe observation beam looking down at the last hope of man, he oftenwondered how many people Noah had turned away as he shut the doors tohis Ark as the Deluge flooded the lands around him.
Nowtime was their main enemy, and a confident enemy it was, at themoment and while the end was a good year away still it take at leastanother three months for the prototype explorer to be completed. Ifnothing went wrong, they envisaged another three months testing thenew propulsion systems, if nothing went wrong that was. It shouldonly be another four to six months before the other explorer classships, and the Ark’s that would hold themajority of those they were taking with them along with geneticmaterial and a vast array of accumulated knowledge. But then if thesomething should happen that put back the schedule by too much, theymay all be doomed and Marcus did not like to dwell too heavily on theprospect of failure.
Itshould have been straight forward, a hundred and fifty years todesign, build and load enough ships to carry a breeding population ofhumans to a new home. Which had then still to be identified. Butthen that didn’t take into account first the dithering that comesfrom denial, which wasted half the time available, and the kind ofargument and debate that lasts for another ten years at least. Stillthat should have allowed them a good fifty years or so to completethe task, but then time is a patient foe capable of waiting out mostits prey.
Oncea potential new home had been identified, and then comes the taskselected which hundred thousand or so souls of millions you save. Adaunting task at any time and all those who had been selected hadbeen tested, screened, prodded, probed and then retested a dozentimes over. Natural selection this wasn’t, especially since thetesting and selection was carried out under strictest of security, orat least that is how it had felt to Marcus who had spent much of hischildhood and adolescence going through the selection process. Butdespite these many years of training and selection the crews for thefive explorer ships were only finalized in the last three years orso. It had only been two years before that, that Marcus had beenchosen the lead the first ship that sail through space between Earthand their new home.
Severalweeks passed since the Commander had visited her and Sarah wasstarting to get restless, even though her memory was still prettyhazy she wanted to get out and explain this strange new place. People, well mostly nurses and other medical staff, came and went,meals were brought and she was able to wash and change her clothes. But still she felt restless, like lion who had been minding its ownbusiness wondering the plains of the Serengeti and without warninghad been shot with a powerful tranquilizer dart by some well-meaningbotanist and had then woken up to find itself cooped up in a 20ft by10ft metal cage with no room to wander. It could have been, worseshe thought to herself from time to time, at least she was free ofall that terrible nothingness now and able to think with somethingapproaching clarity. Sarah had asked some of the med techs who hadvisited her, when she could leave her wing, but they always gave herthe same answer, soon. While she wasn’t confined to a single room,it still didn’t seem enough to her, she needed to roam.
Fora medical wing, apart from the comings and goings of the staff, theredidn’t seem to be much noise and Sarah certainly couldn’t her anyother patients talking or the chatter between patients and theirloved ones which she thought she ought to her during what should havebeen regular visiting hours. In fact in the couple of months thatshe had been awake she hadn’t seen asingle other patient or heard the staff talking of anyone other thanherself and there had been times when Sarah had wondered if she werethe only patient in this facility.
Theactivity that Sarah had seen made her reminded her more of peopletaking inventory or preparing to move house than just going about theday to day routines of looking after the sick or maintaining a busyhospital with all the cleaning and changing of beds and the like thatgoes with it. There had also been a few whispered conversations thatSarah had inadvertently overheard about time running out or some kindof big event coming up, but when those involved realized she wasn’tasleep they abruptly ended their conversations or changed thesubject. Usually enquiring after her health, which did make her feelrather ill at ease. Above all Sarah did wonder when the dashingCommander would come and visit her again.
Infact she didn’t have to wait too long before Marcus sauntered into,what had now effective become her living quarters as well as herhospital room. The last couple of time he had coming to see her hehad been dressed in what Sarah had assumed was the typical uniformfor someone of his rank in the military, but this time he was dresseddifferently. It took her a few minutes to realize that he was in amore casual outfit this time and was wearing some kind of generalfatigue bottoms and a grayish t-shirt, ‘Mustbe what passes for civvies here’ shethought.
“Wouldyou like to see the sights?” Marcus askedafter a half an hour or so of small talk and the usual pleasantriesabout her health. “I think it’sabout time I showed you around, you must be going round the bend inhere and I think I owe you something of an explanation” he added ominously.
Sarahwas rather taken aback by this as there had been times when she hadthought she may never get out of this place, and she nodded heragreement tentatively. “Just give acouple of minutes to change” Sarah saidwhen she had regained her composure somewhat, and it wasn’t untilthe words came out of her mouth that she realized didn’t reallyhave anything, but another pair of the general fatigue bottoms andt-shirt that she too was wearing. When she had first been giventhese to change into out of her medical gown it hadn’teven occurred to her that it was odd that she should be giveninformal general purpose military clothes to wear and later when shedid think if it Sarah quickly dismissed oddity of it as this wasmeant to be something of a military base and it there probablywouldn’t have been much spare clothing for a newly arrived, butbaggage less, stranger to wear, Anyway she slipped into her otherclean clothes to which at least allowed her the illusion that thiswas some kind of special day trip for her.
Marcusled her down the corridor and to a waiting elevator which they rodeto the ground floor, and Sarah was for the first time able to notethat her wing was on the tenth floor. There didn’t seem to her beanything particular note worthy of this little morsel of information,except of course it gave her some kind of appreciation of thebuilding that she had been living in since her arrival. When theyleft the hospital there was a small four person ground transport, notall that dissimilar to a twenty first century motor vehicle, exceptwithout the noxious exhaust gasses, which they got into and drove offin.
Thefirst thing that struck Sarah when they got outside of the hospitalwas the blue sky, which seemed rather odd to her since she had beentold that this was actually Mars and not the Earth she had vaguerecollections of. Marcus would later explain that the planet hadbeen terror formed three or four hundred years previously and theatmosphere had taken on an Earth like blue hue. The second thin thatstruck her was all around the hospital were streets reminiscent ofthe city streets she had vaguerecollections of.
Duringthe journey Marcus pointed out this building and building or thislandmark and that landmark, and what seemed to Sarah as being afairly short time they left the confines of the city and hit what wasthe only highway in sight and which cut through nothing butrelatively flat and open county. On both sides of the highway thedusty plains were red just as Sarah had expected them to be.
Sarahlost herself in the open country side and the soft baritone ofMarcus’ voice as he described the eventsthat had led mankind up to the colonization of one of Earth’smost written about neighbors. How when natural disasters and everdecline resources had led Marcus’ancestors to search out a new home for mankind and ease the pressureof an increasingly densely populated home world. Shortly after thisgreat venture had taken hold and the terror forming had started inearnest, disaster had struck on Earth where a combination of war,famine and disease wiped out over half of the population in a matterof just two hundred years. It had just been in the last threehundred years that man had finally started to get his act togetherand live in relative harmony with himself and his environment.
Homosapiens were finally starting to come out of its adolescence andmature into adult, Marcus had joked at one point. Clean, renewableenergy sources and sustainable food production, as well as theabolition of the pursuit of material wealth, had all been welcome byproducts of the Mars Project. Marcus also mentioned something aboutthe irony of their current situation not being lost on him, but bynow Sarah had become somewhat hypnotized by his voice and the black,repetitive road they were and had allowed herself to slip into adaydream of half remembered events and people with his voice takingover the role of narrator.
Sarahdidn’t really remember her dreams, well not the detail that is, butfrom the feelings and half remembered smells of death and decay sheknew she didn’t want to remember and this was no exception. Duringher time at the hospital Sarah had had plenty of time to think andtry to remember what had led up to her being lost in void of what sheconsidered to be deep space, but with little success and if what shedid recall of theses dreams were anything to go by she did not wantto recall. But the thought of whether these were memories trying tobreak through the barriers of her Swiss cheese mind via hersubconscious or whether they were just random images stored in hersubconscious from watching some old war movie did trouble her. Ifthey were recollections of a past life or deeds then what sort ofperson was she or had been of the right side of whatever conflict shehad been involved? Someone at the hospital had mentioned somethingabout dreams being the minds way of working through the events of thewaking world, but if that was the case what did they mean?
Hertrain of thought was suddenly cut short as the vehicle came to a stopin the outskirts of another complex that was similar to, but smallerthan Terra Alpha. “Welcome to TerraBeta, where things get really interesting”Marcus said when they had stopped.
Thebuildings at Terra Beta were mostly smaller than those at TerraAlpha, being just four stories high, except for few buildings thatlooked to be the other side of the complex that were much larger. But the overall impression that Sarah got of them was the same asthose at Terra Alpha, which was one of functional buildingsconstructed for more for a purpose rather than aesthetical purposes. All in all though they weren’t ugly, just function, plain and grey. In fact all the building that she had seen so far seemed to be thesame shade of metallic grey, with hardly any variation in the colorat all. Made sense, Sarah thought, after all she had gathered thatthese were military complexes that had very few civilians amongst thegeneral population. She wondered then if the administrators and thelike were also military, maybe the human race had become run evendominated by the military in her absence.
Assoon as the thought had finished forming itself in her mind, Sarah’sreaction was that that was a particular egotistical idea, that justbecause SHE had been gone for countless years, that the human racewould suddenly go mad and change beyond all recognition. The nextthought that she had, straight after this one was just how much hadpassed between her leaving and her being found in relative deepspace. Musings for another time, was her immediate reaction to this,as she was determined to make the most out of this rare trip awayfrom her ’quarters’and find out a little more about the new world she found herself in.
Afterthe appearance of the buildings the next thing that struck Sarah washow low key the security was for what she assumed was a top militarycomplex. There were no high walls with barbed wire on the top orelectric fence to keep out intruders, in fact there didn’t seem tobe any kind of check points that you would normally associate withthis kind of complex. She could see what looked like the odd guardtower here and there, but not much else in terms of security.
Marcushad stopped the vehicle momentarily to allow Sarah to take this newsight, but they were soon on their way again and after a few momentswere within the city limits of Terra Beta. They passed dull greyfunctional building after dull grey functional building, turned downfirst one and then a second street and another Marcus navigated hisway expertly through the grid layout of the streets of Terra Betauntil Marcus stopped the vehicle outside yet another dull greybuilding that was one of the larger towers Sarah had seen earlier. As they traversed their way through this second city of Mars, Marcusexplained that between the two complexes they divided the activitiesin such a way that where possible all the living quarters;administrative, medical and connected activities took place at theAlpha Complex. The Beta Complex effectively served as the space forMars and this is what he wanted to show her as it would make what heto tell her more relevant.
Hethen indicated for her to get out of the vehicle, just as he did sohimself and then lead her into the building. They walked past theguard at reception, who nodded recognition towards Marcus and theyentered a waiting elevator at the far side of the floor, which theytook the sixth floor. Not far the elevator they entered a room thatwas just what it looked like, a fairly large deserted canteen. Thewall on the opposite wall to the entrance was a large window and itwas by this that Sarah found a seat while Marcus fetched themsomething to eat. Out of the wall sized window Sarah could see whatlooked like a series of docking bays and shuttles of sizes taking offand landing. Between and around the docking bays there was a bustleof activity as people and cargo were loaded onto and taken from theshuttles and were ferried between these and other buildings thatlooked like warehouses.
Thefood that Marcus offered her was nutritious, filling, but dull andwas typical of what she had come to expect from living in thehospital for the past few months. As she ate she could barelycontain herself from demanding that Marcus tell her why he haddragged her all the way here to tell her what he could have told herat the hospital and, come to mention it, what did he want to tell heranyway? The reasoning center of her brain kicked in and preventedher from blurting out all her questions at once like some ungratefullittle brat. After all how could she demand answers form this mostreasonable and patient of men, when she had hardly been forthcomingherself? ’that’sit Sarah my girl’ she said to herselfbetween chewing mouthfuls of the tasteless and dull rations that wereon her plate ‘Be patient and all will berevealed‘.
Marcushad started to say something which Sarah had missed as sheconcentrated on the food in front of her.
“Youcouldn’t have arrived at worse time”Marcus said again as Sarah tuned back into the situation. “Nooffence, but things here starting to accelerate and your arrival ascomplicated things for us rather” hefinished for the second time.
Sarahlooked at him confused, almost gagging on the latest mouthful ofsomething that she couldn’t quite identify, which did seem to be arecurring theme with the food she had had since awaking in thehospital.
“Yousee for the last century or so we have been working towards thismoment with everyone involved having their job to do or the place inthe grand scheme of things” Marcus said,trying carefully not to offend his guest. “Almosteverything has been calculated and planed down to the last screw,even who will be frozen and who will crew the advance ships.”Again the sinking feeling that Sarah had had in the hospital cameflooding back to her. So they were planning something, and shewasn’t just being paranoid.
Sarahlooked at the man in front of her with a look that she hoped was acombination of confusion and expectation, and not just the formerwhich was the feeling that now dominated her mind. Again thereasoning center of her mind kicked in telling her to remain calm andbe patient.
“Yousee for the last hundred years or so we have known that the sun isdying and that in its death throes will take the Earth, Mars and mostof the planets of our Solar System with it”.
AsMarcus said this just one thing engulfed her mind, panic, which wasthen quickly joined by other emotions such as fear and helplessness,and these were quickly followed by even more confusion and againpanic. Later Sarah couldn’t quite be sure of the exact order ofthe emotions that hit her, but she was confident that was pretty muchhow it happened.
Alongsilence followed Marcus’ last statement,neither of them quite knew what to say. For Sarah this was due to acombination of bafflement and confusion, as well as almost completeterror. What she did want to scream at Marcus was something like.“But you can’tleave me here; you have to take me with you. You must, you simplymust”. But all that did happen was thather mouth opened and then closed again, rather like a guppy fish atfeeding time. On the other side of the table Marcus had decided whathe was going to say, and then deliberately got caught up in varioustasks that he could have delegated so that he would have to avoidhaving this awkward conversation. At this moment in time he felt abit like a doctor who has to tell a patient who has just come out ofa coma, that the cancer they didn’t know they had is going to killthem in a few weeks. But in the end, as all the preparations aroundthem took on a life of their own he really couldn’t put this offany longer.
EventuallySarah did manage to squeak a rather feeble “But…”,not quite knowing what to say or what to do. At this moment in timeperhaps she did feel like the patient who has just come out of thecoma to be told that they cancer she didn’t know she had was goingto kill her in a few weeks.
Itwas Marcus who broke the next period of silence.
“I’msorry” He stuttered, all those hours ofpreparation had just deserted him, like a singer who had rehearsed aparticular song for months only to have their memory go blank onopening night. “”We, I, should havetold you sooner, but there never seemed to the right time”Never is the right time for this sort of thing Marcus added silently.
Thensilence again as they finished their meal, the food tasting ever morelike ashes in Sarah’s mouth. There camea point after the meal that Marcus said that it was time that theywere going, and they left the canteen and entered an elevator when iteventually arrived.
Therehad been a silence between the two of them ever since they had leftthe canteen. Sarah not daring to ask the questions that burned onher lips and Marcus was partly reluctant to say anything in case hespoiled the rest of the surprise. He also didn’t want to let slip,to this barely known newcomer, his misgivings about the currentsituation in case she wasn’t what she seemed. Marcus’revelation in the canteen about the end of world had produced theeffect he had hoped for and it did seem to come as almost a completesurprise to the flame haired woman. He still wished that he knew alot more about this stranger in the midst before showing hereverything as there were groups who were violently against this lastgambit of a soon to be extinct people. There had been those who haddelved far too much into what the government had been keeping backfrom the general populace, which was that only a small percentage ofthe current population would be saved.
Thiswas one of the parts of the plan that still bothered Marcus as muchas it had done when his father had told him as a young man. But,especially over the last five years, Marcus had come to realize thatit was better to expend their relatively limited resources inensuring that the species survived, than trying to save everyone. There were times that Marcus watched the ships that carry the luckysurvivors to their new homes he felt that had the same realizationthat Noah must have had thousands of years before, that sometimes youhave sacrifice the present in order to save the future. Standing onthe observation beam looking down at the last hope of man, he oftenwondered how many people Noah had turned away as he shut the doors tohis Ark as the Deluge flooded the lands around him.
Nowtime was their main enemy, and a confident enemy it was, at themoment and while the end was a good year away still it take at leastanother three months for the prototype explorer to be completed. Ifnothing went wrong, they envisaged another three months testing thenew propulsion systems, if nothing went wrong that was. It shouldonly be another four to six months before the other explorer classships, and the Ark’s that would hold themajority of those they were taking with them along with geneticmaterial and a vast array of accumulated knowledge. But then if thesomething should happen that put back the schedule by too much, theymay all be doomed and Marcus did not like to dwell too heavily on theprospect of failure.
Itshould have been straight forward, a hundred and fifty years todesign, build and load enough ships to carry a breeding population ofhumans to a new home. This had then still to be identified. Butthen that didn’t take into account first the dithering that comesfrom denial, which wasted half the time available, and the kind ofargument and debate that lasts for another ten years at least. Stillthat should have allowed them a good fifty years or so to completethe task, but then time is a patient foe capable of waiting out mostits prey.
Oncea potential new home had been identified, and then comes the taskselected which hundred thousand or so souls of millions you save. Adaunting task at any time and all those who had been selected hadbeen tested, screened, prodded, probed and then retested a dozentimes over. Natural selection this wasn’t, especially since thetesting and selection was carried out under strictest of security, orat least that is how it had felt to Marcus who had spent much of hischildhood and adolescence going through the selection process. Butdespite these many years of training and selection the crews for thefive explorer ships were only finalized in the last three years orso. It had only been two years before that, that Marcus had beenchosen the lead the first ship that sail through space between Earthand their new home.